8/6/08

Report pins France on Rwanda genocide
Tuesday, 5th August, 2008
 

KIGALI, Tuesday

Rwanda formally accused senior French officials on Tuesday of involvement in its 1994 genocide and called for them to be put on trial.

Among those named in a report by a Rwandan investigation commission were former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and the late President Francois Mitterrand.

Kigali has previously accused Paris of covering up its role in training troops and militia who carried out massacres that killed some 800,000 people, and of propping up the ethnic Hutu leaders who orchestrated the slaughter.

France denies the claim and says its forces helped protect people during a UN-sanctioned mission in Rwanda at the time.

The latest allegations from Kigali came on Tuesday with the publication of the report by an independent Rwandan commission set up to investigate France�s role in the bloodshed.

�The French support was of a political, military, diplomatic and logistic nature,� the report said.

�Considering the gravity of the alleged facts, the Rwandan government asks competent authorities to undertake all necessary actions to bring the accused French political and military leaders to answer for their acts before justice.�

Attached to the report was a list of 33 accused French political and military officials.

French officials were not immediately available to comment.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame cut ties with France in November 2006 in protest at a French judge�s call for him to stand trial over the death of his predecessor in April 1994, an event widely seen as unleashing the genocide.

But relations between Paris and the former rebel commander had improved in recent months.

The report contains the names of those alleged to be implicated and the accusations against them.
Some 800,000 people were killed in just 100 days in the 1994 massacre.

Earlier this year, France�s foreign minister denied French responsibility in connection with the genocide, but said political errors had been made.

The Kigali government set up a commission to investigate France's alleged role in the genocide.

After two years� probe, the team last November presented a the 500-page document to the government last November.

Kagame�s government has repeatedly accused France of arming and training the Hutu extremists who perpetrated the genocide, and of dragging its feet in co-operating with the investigations that followed the massacres.

The two countries have had a frosty relationship since 2006 when a French judge implicated President Paul Kagame in the downing in 1994 of then-President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane, which triggered the killings.

President Kagame has always denied the charges and says Mr Habyarimana, a Hutu, was killed by Hutu extremists who blamed the incident on his Tutsi rebels to provide the pretext for the genocide.

Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu extremists in the genocide.

In February, Spanish judge Fernando Andreu issued arrest warrants for 40 Rwandan army officers accusing them of carrying out killings during Rwanda's genocide in 1994.

Andreu who investigated the matter after a human rights group filed a complaint in 2005 alleged that the officers committed genocide, terrorism and crimes against humanity.

Under Spanish law, a court can prosecute alleged human rights crimes, even if they take place abroad.

Andreu also indicted the Rwandan officers for the murder of nine Spanish citizens, including six missionaries.

He said he had evidence implicating President Kagame,
Reacting to the Spanish report, Rwandese leader described the judge as "arrogant" saying that he (Andreu) can "go to hell".

He said the judge had not distinguished between genocide perpetrators, and those who stopped it, such as his own forces.
"Imagine the arrogance involved - how can a Spanish judge sit in some town or village in Spain and sees it is his duty to indict the whole leadership of a nation," Mr Kagame said in Kigali.

During a 100-day period in 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed, mainly ethnic Tutsis at the hands of radical Hutus.
The genocide came to an end when Tutsi-led rebels under Mr Kagame took control.

But the judge said that, after taking power, the army under Mr Kagame carried out mass killings of Hutus in Rwanda and in refugee camps in neighbouring DR Congo, then Zaire.






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Jean-Louis Kayitenkore
Procurement Consultant
Gsm: +250-08470205
Home: +250-55104140
P.O. Box 3867
Kigali-Rwanda
East Africa
Blog: http://www.cepgl.blogspot.com
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